Benjamin Quinto

Benjamin Quinto "has been working to unite young people's efforts to change the world since the age of 18. After High School, he gave up on his childhood dream of acting and, searching for greater meaning in his life, attended a meeting at the United Nations. There he found a new sense of purpose: to give young people a voice in achieving peace,

"In 1996, he authored a proposal for a United Nations Youth Assembly, which evolved into the Global Youth Action Network (GYAN) in 1999. As its founder and executive director, he led GYAN to become an alliance of thousands of organizations in over 180 countries, mobilizing millions of young people, with offices and teams in over a dozen countries at one point."